Just two days after Dubai outlined a restructuring plan to cope with its massive debt, the emirate aims to recapture the spotlight by staging the world's richest horse race at a new $2 billion facility Saturday. Dubai's ruler – a well-known horse enthusiast – has spared no expense to finish the Meydan Racecourse in time for the Dubai World Cup, an eight-race meeting with a total purse of $26 million – a huge amount in an economic recession that has seen Dubai's economy plunge into the red. “It's a mega event that will provide some reassurance for the racing industry by showing that Dubai's ruling family is still heavily involved, ready to invest and willing to keep going,” said Sean Ennis, a professor of sports marketing at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. With two race tracks, a grandstand that holds 60,000 spectators, a 290-room luxury hotel, a marina and a horse racing museum, Meydan stands as a monument to Dubai's excess. Saturday's card includes the $10 million centerpiece race run for the first time on the Tapeta surface. Meydan features a left-handed 1½-mile turf circuit outside of a smaller synthetic track that is just over a mile (1,750 meters) long. Although initial reaction to the track has been upbeat, many of the jockeys and trainers have only had a few days to get used to the synthetic surface, which replaces the dirt at the old Nad al Sheba track. Several top thoroughbreds expected in Dubai dropped out, including Japan's two-time Horse of the Year, Vodka, and American trainer John Shirreffs' mare, Life is Sweet – making this year's World Cup the most open contest in its 15-year history. Some of Europe's top 10-furlong horses are in the field, including British-trained Gitano Hernando, the Goodwood Stakes winner at Santa Anita in October. The lone Japanese entry, four-year-old filly Red Desire, impressed earlier this month in winning the Maktoum Challenge on the same Meydan course. For the premier World Cup race, though, most observers are focusing on Gio Ponti, a two-time 2009 Eclipse Award winner from Kentucky. The five-year-old is a turf specialist, but his backers hope the second-place finish in November in the Breeders' Cup Classic on an artificial surface will prove beneficial when Gio Ponti races on the similar track at Meydan Saturday. In the $5 million, 1½-mile Dubai Sheema Classic, Presious Passion, the runner-up in the Breeders' Cup Turf last fall and winner of the Mac Diarmada at Gulfstream on Feb. 28, is among the most fancied. The two entries from the Godolphin Racing stables of Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, are both long shots. Since the 1980s, Sheik Mohammed has turned Godolphin into a major force in racing with purchases of top bloodstock around the world and the establishment of United States-based operations in Kentucky and South Carolina. But there is one coveted trophy that has eluded him: the Kentucky Derby. The $2 million, 1 3/16-mile UAE Derby is one of eight races Saturday and is seen as a key warm-up race for the Kentucky Derby on May 1. One of Godolphin's Churchill Downs hopefuls, Vale of York, was scratched from the UAE Derby, after finishing a disappointing fifth in the colt's first start of the year at Meydan earlier this month. The sheik's efforts to win a Kentucky Derby have been stepped up in recent years with record-shattering purchases of not just stallions but also mares, including Playful Act, which he bought in 2007 for an unprecedented $10.5 million.
